In an unprecedented decision, the Brazilian Amnesty Commission, linked to the Ministry of Human Rights, recognized collective violations perpetrated during the military dictatorship. At a hearing on Tuesday (2), the commission's president, Eneá de Stutz e Almeida, knelt before matriarch Djanira Krenak to make official an apology request to the Krenak Indigenous people on behalf of the Brazilian state.
“For the first time, I won’t be standing up to ask forgiveness. I'm going to ask for your permission to kneel. With your blessing, on behalf of the Brazilian state, I want to ask forgiveness for all the suffering your people have gone through. I want to ask for forgiveness in the presence of your father, who is here with us right now, with all your ancestors," Almeida said.
Among the episodes of violence that better represent the attacks against the Krenak people during the dictatorship, there were forced displacement, the creation of the so-called Indigenous Rural Guard (also known as Grin) and the installation of the Krenak Reformatory, a prison built within Indigenous territory in the town of Resplendor, Minas Gerais state, where representatives of 23 ethnic groups were violated.
The request made by the Krenaks, an Indigenous people originally from northern Minas Gerais state, was the first of its kind analyzed by the commission. A similar request, made by the Guyraroká Indigenous people, currently occupying an area in Mato Grosso do Sul state, was due to be analyzed on Tuesday (2).
"I’m asking your people and all the other Indigenous peoples' forgiveness for the persecution against you carried out in the last 524 years due to non-Indigenous people invading this land, which belongs to you", said Almeida.
In 2022, still under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), the commission's members rejected the two lawsuits proposed by the representatives of the Indigenous peoples. However, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office appealed, and the cases were included on this week's agenda, a few days after the 60th anniversary of the coup that overthrew then President João Goulart and ushered in 21 years of repression and violations committed by the state.
This Tuesday's trials were allowed after a change in the Amnesty Commission's internal regulations. Until March 2023, it was only possible to grant individual reparations to victims of the dictatorship. The review of decisions previously rejected, such as the Krenak case, was another change to the commission's rules.
"To prevent it from happening again, we agree with all the requests your people have made here in this trial. We are also making the appropriate recommendations to the bodies of the Brazilian state, to the country’s legislature, judiciary power and Funai [National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples], so that the land is demarcated, people can get back together and continue to be our protectors, preserving the environment, as you have ancestrally done," added the president of the Amnesty Commission.
Set up in 2002, at the end of President Fernando Henrique's second term, the Amnesty Commission, a body linked to the Ministry of Human Rights, aims to recognize and repair the damage caused by the military dictatorship.
